In the UK the Licensing Act 2003 came into affect in 2005. You might remember the news items on BBC News where a reporter stood outside a pub that had received a license to be open for 24 hours. Surely this new Act meant that people would drink non-stop. It wasn't really about that though.

We work on the principle that every person drinks at least 1 bottle of water. One bottle is half a litre. So for a 10,000 capacity festival we are looking at least at 5,000 litres. At Electric Daisy, with 145,000 attendees, we poured roughly 1 million bottles: or 500,000 litres of water over 3 days.

Event planners should take health & safety aspects at their events very serious. Most of them do this already. As part of the licensing requirements event planners need to create (and implement) a risk assessment. Accidents still happen though.

Whichever festival you go to, make sure you plan it properly. Part of that planning process is to start talking to your friends about how to stay safe at festivals. What is your plan to look after yourself and your friends?

The Upcoming is giving you some great safety tips when attending gigs and music festivals. You can read the article here.

Glastonbury festival works with Festival Medical Services. According to the Guardian this charity organisation “will have 850 volunteers including doctors, nurses, podiatrists, ultrasound technicians, paramedics and dentists” on site. If you are an event planner this might sound daunting. Logistics, planning, and costs are probably the first things you think of.

“One of the first things event planners need to do is to acknowledge that certain drugs might be used at their event. There are laws that prohibit certain drugs and you will follow certain standards and procedures with regards to these drugs laws. But… acknowledging that some of these drugs inevitably come onto your event site and will be use used is the first step”.